I've been chewing over my post about phonecams and thinking more about what Nonliteral.com elaborated on, which is the changing reality that we're soon to be living in an urban and suburban society where we're always on film in public places, and to assume otherwise would be naive. That's a significant change in how we view ourselves as public beings, at least unless you've been dying to live the life of a reality TV participant and expecting your fifteen minutes to tap you on the shoulder when you least expect it.
But then I thought about this more and I think where the real harbinger for change lies with men. John Berger in Ways of Seeing said it best: "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at." Women are always aware that someone is looking at them (and I would argue gay men as well, as they also seek out the male gaze. I'll leave the argument open on whether or not lesbian relationships incorporate the same division between one who looks and one who is looked at.), and frankly the expectation that now we're being captured on film in public by men who wish to use our images for sexual gratification isn't anything new, except that now they actually have a way of storing them instead of using their imaginations once they get home.
Where this gets interesting to me is how men will begin to react in a world where they are now not just actors but objects as well. Of course, there won't be as many sites and services devoted to distributing their images around the world in a sexual context (but to be fair, MobileAsses does host pics of men's asses as well!) so the objectification is not as likely to be as it is with women. It will probably be more of a general privacy/security issue, but I’d like to see the reaction when straight men find themselves objectified by gay men and straight women on sites devoted to calling them “hot or not.” (Personally, I’m imagining a site where I can post photos of all the creepy guys who accost me in bars and on Muni.)